Here are a few reviews of books I've read in the last several weeks. After reading a lot of horror and fantasy in the last year, I've been feeling more of a return to good old science fiction lately. See if you can guess which review I wrote before I broke my arm and it became difficult to type!
Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter
This book has two of my favorite science fiction tropes: generation ships and Big Dumb Objects. It started out promising, but for some reason it didn't click for me as it went on.
I was also intrigued by the title: noumenon is a term used by the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant to indicate a real object that cannot be directly known. The use of the term here is a bit watered down (and doesn't mention Kant once!), which come to think of it, describes some of my reaction to the whole novel. The novel also includes clones and hints at thorny issues of freedom and genetic determinism (at one point even the idea that there may be culturally-independent genes for independence), but then none of this is ever really developed. Nor is the ethical issue of whether it's right to impose life on a ship to several future generations. Even the Big Dumb Object fell flat for me, but I won't spoil it. For a book with so much going on conceptually and so much potential for Big Ideas, there's not much depth to it.
None of this is to say this is a bad book. I really enjoyed the first few vignettes. The story is told in what are technically novelettes or novellas, each focusing on different characters at different points of time during the centuries-long mission. I love the AI that runs the ship (the only character in all the stories). But somehow as it went on, I cared less and less about the new characters in each successive story.
I love the concept of telling a story in vignettes over a long period of time (some of Asimov's Foundation books do this as well), but I think part of the issue is that just as you're starting to get into one idea, we're moving on to the next. At the beginning I was excited to see where it would end up, but by the last 100 pages or so, I was wondering how much of the core mystery would be wrapped up--or whether I cared much to find out. (Maybe the key to loving this book lies forever in the nominal realm... just a bit of Kantian humor for you.)
Again, all of this probably sounds harsher than I mean it to. The first half or so is quite good. And maybe there's some personal idiosyncrasy that interfered with my enjoyment of the second half. Your genes and environment may dispose you to enjoying it more than mine.
Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley
A fun space opera with a few interesting characters, but overall not particularly deep or groundbreaking. I'd like to know more about all the different aliens, but I did like the Uvovo, especially the main one we get to know. I liked the story of the guy trying to go through the galaxy to the planet where most of the other characters are. The only really interesting Big Ideas have to do with the alien archaeology stuff, but maybe that pays off more in the sequels. I do like a space opera in which humans are very minor players in the grand scheme of things. I mean, who the hell do we think we are, anyway? I might pick up the sequel sometime.
In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker
This is the first book in a series I've been meaning to check out for a while. This might be one of those series that gets better as it goes along, but this one was mostly enjoyable.
The beginning and the end are great. The middle in 16th century England drags on seemingly interminably. But the idea of the Company (a time traveling group of immortal humans who collect things from history) is really cool. And I liked the romance, even if the protagonist being 19 made it a bit melodramatic as all romances involving 19-year-olds are whether they're immortal super humans or not. I'll probably read some of the sequels one of these days just to collect some interesting reads of my own.
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